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Publish or perish.

It’s the driving force behind both academia and the Japanese music industry. (How strange such a connection can be made between the two.)

Following the creative success of 2003’s Present, Bonnie Pink returns a year later with Even So.

The pressure to produce continually can result in spotty work. For Bonnie Pink, the clarity of 2000’s Let go collapsed on 2001’s Just a Girl.

Would Even So fall under the same fate?

The album does have one obvious weak moment. Who thought it was a good idea to rip off Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” for the opening riff of “1 2 3”?

But for the most part, Even So and Present are actually two sides of the same coin.

There’s not much different about Pink’s writing on Even So — it’s the same kind of earnest singer-songwriter material that’s been the basis of her career.

But where Present was mostly introspective, Even So is quite extroverted.

The chorus of “5 More Minutes” bursts into some uncharacteristic rock guitars. “Private Laughter” starts off sounding slightly robotic, but its chorus also unleashes a storm.

“The answer ~Hitostu ni Naru Toki~” has a dark, dramatic quality that edges Pink closer to Cocco’s terrain, while “Shinsei Game” finds her delivering one of her fastest songs yet.

Pink makes room for some moments of introspection, notably “Ocean” and “I Just Want to Make You Happy”, but even a ballad such as “Last Kiss” makes room for some power chords.

Even So isn’t a totally different album from Present — or any of her other work, for that matter — but the way Pink is willing to rock out is quite distinctive.

It would have been nice if her label backed off a bit and spaced out her release schedule. Who knows how much more powerful the album would have been with just a few more months to write?

But as it stands, Even So is still a solid work.

Constraining though the 3-minute pop song may be, it has its usefulness — especially when you collect about 12 of them together.

Not that there’s anything wrong with pop songs longer than 3 minutes. Mathematically speaking, 12 x 3 = 36 minutes worth of music, whereas 12 x 5 = 60 minutes worth of music.

The latter offers much bang for the buck — if the songs are worth all five minutes.

And hence the problem with Love Psychedelico’s third album, Love Psychedelico III. The album drags under the weight of its length.

Three of the 13 tracks on the album clock in at less than 5 minutes, but another three clock in a few seconds more than 6 minutes, which cancels each other out.

Length wouldn’t be much of a problem if the album contained really compelling songs, which it doesn’t.

The writing on Love Psychedelico III is just a few degrees shy of Sheryl Crow, despite the fact the band’s unique blend of ’60s rock and ’90s technology remains in tact.

In fact, the chorus of “I am waiting for you” and most of “fleeing star” sound like Crow.

The band’s reliance on drum machines has also locked it into a rhythmically rigid feel. As a result, Love Psychedelico’s songs start blending into each other.

How many more times are we going to listen to Kumi deliver one monotone melody after another?

The longer lengths plus the homogenous writing makes Love Psychedlico III tiring 3/4 of the way through.

Other writers wrote the band off after the second album, but I’m not sure Love Psychedelico’s creative well has totally run dry.

There’s a more overtly southern influence the band hasn’t fully explored, and it may well inject some unpredictability to the duo’s sound.

But Love Psychedelico III finds the pair stuck. And belaboring the point, too.

If the Go-Go’s taught us anything, it’s that punk can be dressed up in bubblegum pop.

It’s a lesson noodles have inverted — the Yokohama-based band dresses bubblegum pop to be punk.

Or rather, post-punk — noodles is a bit more polished than its like-minded countryfolk in Shonen Knife and Mummy the Peepshow.

On 2003’s God Cable, any number of tracks could have been recast in the mold of a Phil Spector production and lose little of its character. (Although it would be kind of neat to hear Ronnie Spector singing in Japanese.)

Perhaps the most likely candidate is “Culture” — the chorus alone has “girl group” written all over it. “Come Here” comes in at a close second — replace the entire band with one of Spector’s mini symphonies, and it becomes a time warp.

The past has a strong influence on God Cable.

“Sweeper” could almost be mistaken for knock-off Beatles, while “Classic Chord Book” might sound familiar to Brian Wilson.

But noodles aren’t beholden to it.

“Hikari no Cho” starts off with a dissonant riff that would make listeners in the ’60s squeamish. And “She, her” soaks in the sludgey guitars of the early ’90s. (Yeah, I could have used the word “grunge”.)

The band’s fuzzy sound balances playfulness with strength, and God Cable collects a set of very serviceable tunes.

But after a while, the album becomes homogenous. The chugging power chords appear track after track, and the songs get indistinguishable toward the end.

“Silent Apple” attempts to break up the flow with a different rhythm and feel, but it’s not quite enough.

noodles does a fine job of bridging past and present, and on the whole, God Cable demonstrates that ability well.